


Does It Have To Be Mine?

by jailedbard (twoheadedenby)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: (extremely lowkey pheromones because i do not traffic in That Nonsense), (it's just like hayfever but for boners), Other, Overstimulation, Pheromones, Plant sex, Tentacles, also some implied severian/urianger because i am a beast, character whose gender is plant, dmab nonbinary character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 13:16:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12109521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoheadedenby/pseuds/jailedbard
Summary: Sun'li can't help noticing that strange and interesting plant. What is it?





	Does It Have To Be Mine?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnonymousRequest](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=AnonymousRequest).



> Completed for an exchange!
> 
> With thanks and apologies to everyone who has ever been involved in any capacity with any production of Little Shop of Horrors past, present, or future.

~~_Sumin_~~ ~~_Soonit_~~ ~~_Sun'li_~~ ~~_Sunny?_~~ _To whom it may concern,_

_Urianger speaks so highly of your ability to get things done! I trust my plants are in good hands while he and I venture out into the wilds in search of samples. I hope so, at least, because I shouldn’t like to see months of research lost at the hands of an incompetent gardening assistant._

_Urianger should have left you with the key and address to my private greenhouse. You’ll find everything you need to tend to my plants within. The small shelved pots require naught but water twice a day, and everything else is appropriately labelled with the names and quantities of fertiliser it requires. Is? Should be. I’m sure I labelled everything. Didn’t I? Well, no mind now._

_Before I forget myself, one last note: the large plant in the middle of the room is crucial to my work, and requires the utmost care and attention. Watch out, though! It’s spring and the big fellow is feeling frisky._

_I can only imagine how excited you must be to play such an integral role in the process of scientific advance! I apologise that I cannot pay you more for your help, or, indeed, anything, but I’m sure the opportunity to take part in making history is reward enough._

_Regards,_

_Severian, Alchemist Guildmaster_

Sun'li sighed with frustration and stuffed the crumpled note back in his pocket. Re-reading it for the dozenth time had not made him feel any better about being roped into this undertaking. The other note in his pocket, from Urianger, was even more impersonal: just a piece of paper with Sun'li’s name scrawled on the top and a key taped to it. He didn’t even spring for an envelope.

Sun'li had never much cared for Urianger, and this incident had hardly improved his disposition. He suspected Urianger’s recommendation was based less on his suitability for the task and more on his history of never turning down the man’s nonsensical and inconvenient requests. Disliking someone, as it turned out, was not enough to overcome his innate inability to say “no” to someone in need.

He had managed to take some of the sting out of being stuck in Ul’Dah as an unpaid gardener by resolving to make the most of his time there. It had been some time since he’d visited the city’s orphanage, or caught up with his old Immortal Flames cohorts. At least he would be spending the next week in the company of people he actually wanted to see, instead of peculiar and offputting elezen and their peculiar and offputting friends.

The first order of business, however, was getting to the greenhouse to start his work, early enough that the first rays of morning sun had not yet turned into the blazing daytime heat that was Ul’Dah’s primary stock in trade. In this he was only partially successful; he got lost (as he always did) navigating the city’s labyrinthine streets and murky alleyways, arriving a good bell past when he intended to.

The key he had been given fit the door, which was a relief. He had fully expected one or both of his would-be employers to have supplied the wrong one in a fit of absentmindedness. Sun'li had learned how to pick locks some years ago, for fun, but weak nerves and an overactive sense of guilt had prevented him from ever putting the knowledge into practice.

The inside of the building was dark and musty; the air far more humid than that which Sun'li had been breathing only moments ago. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lower light, and he was delighted by what he saw. He should have assumed that these would be no ordinary plants, given their owner, and he would have been right.

Arrayed before him was a bioluminescent spectacle, in colours that Sun'li couldn’t even swear he knew existed before now. The dimly-illuminated shelves held dozens of pots that in turn held a dizzying variety of leaves and flowers glowing in rich hues. Motes of pollen, either reflecting the ambient light or producing their own, traced swirling patterns in the dark.

Sun'li had no prior history of hayfever, but he could feel his cheeks getting warm. He resisted the urge to sneeze, irrationally afraid that he might somehow disturb the otherworldly beauty before him. He could not, however, resist the impulse to reach out and touch the plant nearest to him. He ran a finger along one of its leaves, in a colour that at least approximated fuchsia, then examined his fingertip to see if anything had rubbed off on it. He was a little dismayed to recall that plants don’t work that way.

He shook his head, trying to clear it of the runaway daydreams about pigments and dyes and adorning himself in colours vibrant enough to turn heads. He had a job to do, after all. It took him a minute to locate the gardening tools in the gloom, haphazardly piled on a table near the door. There was a small watering can among them, and a water tank the same height as the table nearby to draw from.

The work went surprisingly quickly, even as Sun'li dallied to watch the way the light refracted through the water as he tended to each potted plant in turn. Everything in the building had been shifted up against the walls which, combined with Sun'li’s unimpressive stature, required him to lean over on tiptoes to reach the higher shelves. He nearly tripped over the larger pots lining the floor several times as he worked, but nothing worse came of it than some spilled water.

Dominating the large open floor space in the centre of the room was a single large pot, wider in diameter than Sun'li himself, by a considerable margin. The part of Severian’s letter alluding to its importance, coupled with the vaguely-worded warning, made Sun'li uneasy around it. Wherever possible, he kept watch on it out of the corner of his eye as he worked. The plant, which appeared to be a single intimidatingly large flowerbud rising from the pot housing it, showed no sign of movement.

It only took four or five trips back to the water tank to have all of the small and medium sized pots watered. Severian had, thankfully, remembered to label the fertiliser piled in bags underneath the table. The notes were scrawled in barely legible script, made more difficult to comprehend through the dim lighting and Severian’s apparent assumption that Sun'li knew the scientific names of each and every plant in the building. In truth, it was only in this very moment that he discovered that plants _had_ scientific names. Natives of the Black Shroud had colloquial names for every root, tree, and flower under the sun, and he had never needed anything more than that. He was sure he had never heard of a single plant currently before him, though, and he had to wonder where on Hydaelyn they hailed from.

With enough time spent sitting cross-legged on the cool, hard floor of the greenhouse, squinting and puzzling out instructions, Sun'li eventually managed to put together enough information to work from. Fertilising the rows of flowers and bushes lining the floor proved significantly less pleasant than the watering. The mixture in the bags smelled as alien as the luminescent flowers looked, and was as pungent and unpleasant as they were eerie and beautiful. It also radiated a curious heat, one that Sun'li could feel even through the thick fabric sack. He took great pains to make sure none of it got on his hands.

At last, he was done with every potted plant save the one in the middle, which he had deliberately left for last. Its presence still unnerved him. More troubling still, after considerable searching, he could not find any appropriately-labelled resources for its upkeep. The letter had stressed the importance of _this plant in particular_ , and Sun'li could ill afford to fail now. He wondered why he was so afraid of disappointing a man he had never once met in person, but failed to arrive at an answer.

“All plants need water, right?” asked Sun'li to an empty room. The plants, unsurprisingly, had no answer for him. The stifling silence made him suddenly unsure of even this most basic tenet of botany. Uncertainly, he continued. “So, we may as well start with that. I hope.”

He advanced slowly and cautiously towards the centre of the room, with a full watering can clutched defensively to his chest. With a shaky and more-firm-than-necessary grip on the handle, he lowered the can to the lip of the pot, trying to angle the spout so that the water all ran to the roots instead of the large bulb growing out of them, which widened at its base in a way that made the task rather difficult. The pot was big enough that it took nearly half a watering can before the soil started looking appropriately damp. Sun'li breathed a sigh of relief.

The relief was short-lived. Before his eyes, the plant began to move, swaying from side to side before it began shaking violently. Sun'li was startled enough that he scrambled backwards, dropping the watering can and spilling water across the floor in the process. He stood a couple of fulms away from the pot, water seeping into his shoes, as the bulb’s gyrations slowed and it began to unfurl. The tip split into the ends of half a dozen individual petals, spiralling lazily out in unison into a flower shape rather like an impossibly large daisy. Each petal lit up red, then purple, then blue, then back again. The unfurling was accompanied by a cloud of luminous pollen shooting into the air and settling there; an indoor constellation of floating lights.

Emerging from deeper within the flower’s core were a number of long, thin tendrils, flailing aimlessly about in the open air. Sun'li had largely acclimated to the humid heat in the greenhouse by now, but he could feel that same flushed warmth he had felt on entering returning to his cheeks standing in the dense cloud of pollen. His chest tingled, and there was a sneeze rising in his upper body. The sound of it rung through the high-ceilinged room, and then something very peculiar indeed happened.

The plant’s tendrils were standing frozen on end, almost evoking a sense of surrender. They had been waving idly before Sun'li sneezed, but now he would swear that its body language had tensed up entirely, if he was prepared to admit that plant body language made any sense as a concept. Feeling distinctly like an idiot, he called out to it. “Sorry! Did I startle you?”

To his amazement, the tendrils relaxed, returning to the same restless idle state they were in before, with one exception: they were pointing in his direction. He put a hand to his chest. “You can understand me?”

More amazing yet, the plant _nodded_ in response. There was no other way Sun'li could think to interpret the rhythmic up-and-down motion of the tendrils pointed in his direction. He advanced in its direction, his feet making muffled splashing noises as he walked through the spilled water pooling around him. Once he was within arm’s reach of the petals, he could see the plant much better, illuminated by its own slowly pulsing light.

It had seemed, from a distance, not entirely unlike an ochu, albeit bigger than the Shroud’s natives. Up close, Sun'li realised he was looking at something unlike any ochu he had ever seen. The luminous flower petals were an obvious point of difference, but the prehensile vines were also far greater in quantity and appeared in two distinct varieties: the thinner ones culminating in a tapered, bulbous head more closely resembled those of an ochu, but there were also at least four thicker vines which, at this distance, ended in what were visibly and unmistakeably mouths.

Sun'li yelped. Without warning, a pair of the thinner vines had snaked out towards him and started tracing their tips over his upper body. Sun'li was underdressed in a loose, thin cotton shirt and low-waisted shorts; his preferred manner of dealing with the Ul’Dahn heat. That was, he assumed, the reason his skin reacted with such immediate sensitivity to the plant’s touch. To its credit, the vines drew back and hovered a few ilms from his chest in response to his sudden outburst.

“Sorry, you startled me,” said Sun'li. The plant cocked its mouth-vines apologetically. He peered closer at the mouths, and into the centre of the flower itself. An idea was starting to dawn on him. “You’ve got no eyes. You can’t actually see me, can you?”

The plant shook its heads from side to side. Reaching out a hand to touch one of the feelers poised in front of him, Sun'li said, “Did you just want to know what I look like?”

The plant nodded. The feeler Sun'li had put his hand to pressed against his palm inquisitively. Sun'li stroked the end of it with his fingers, finding it surprisingly damp and slick to the touch. Sap, perhaps? He let his arm fall back to his side, and swallowed. “Well, if we’re getting to know each other, I think you ought to know what I look like. Just… be gentle, okay?”

“I’m Sun'li,” he said as the plant returned to tracing his outline with its feelers. It was going slower and with a lighter touch this time, though his skin still prickled to its touch. “I don’t know if you have a name, or how you could tell me if you did. I’ll have to ask Severian when he gets back.”

He shivered when it reached his lower arms, touching bare skin not covered by his sleeves. He felt suddenly self-conscious, as if the plant was revealing his own body to him as it discovered it for itself. He could feel his arms where they made contact with the vines, his exposed legs under the humid air, the water pooling at his feet, the warmth in his cheeks, the…

Sun'li had just made an alarming discovery: he was rock-hard under his shorts. Instinctively, he clapped his hands to his crotch, only realising after he did so that the plant could not see, let alone appreciate the gesture. As a matter of fact, the movement had only drawn its attention, and one of its heads approached him, pointing curiously down at his hands.

“Gods, I’m so sorry, this doesn’t usually happen, I don’t know what brought it on, I...” Sun'li trailed off, burning with embarrassment for the situation at hand, embarrassment for frantically apologising to a plant, and a third burning sensation that wasn’t embarrassment at all. He was staring at his feet in shame, but his eyes were drawn by motion. The plant had raised its feelers into the air, swirling them in circles to kick the motes of glowing pollen around. Another feeler pointed, with some kind of excited urgency, at the gesture.

“Wait… _You_ did this? I knew it wasn’t allergies!” The plant’s heads nodded, with a note of what Sun'li would swear seemed to be sheepishness. “I didn’t think _this_ was what Severian meant by ‘frisky!’”

The plant motioned toward his hands, still firmly clamped down over his crotch. It was a cautious but insistent motion; careful not to get too close to his personal space, but urgent and questioning in its repetition. It felt like an absurdity, but Sun'li couldn’t shake the impression that the plant was propositioning him.

“Is this what you… I mean, do you… Are you…” Sun'li was quickly coming to understand that he had no idea how to ask a plant if it was hitting on him. The plant, for its part, seemed equally confused in the quizzical head movements of its vines. After more false starts that didn’t even get further than wordless sounds, Sun'li eventually blurted out, “Do you want to fuck me?”

The plant nodded, enthusiastically this time. Sun'li blinked, his mouth agape. He had never, in all his years on the planet, and all his sexual misadventures until now, imagined that he could possibly find himself in this situation. Moreover, he couldn’t believe how seriously he was considering it. Or the dawning realisation that he already knew the answer to his own question.

His curiosity was going to be the death of him one day. At least he could take solace in knowing that no matter what happened, he wasn’t likely to die wondering.

“Well, I suppose if… Do you know what you’re doing?” The plant nodded once more. “Then, if you really want to, I think I might be, I mean, I also want to, you know, maybe, we could…?”

Sun'li let his arms fall away from covering himself. It seemed easier than words at this juncture. The plant’s heads looked up at the ceiling, swaying excitedly in some kind of display of happiness. It was awfully cute, two words that Sun'li had never before and would never again use to describe vegetation. The plant extended its feelers closer to him, slipping under his shirt hem and tugging at his waistband. His skin tingled more intensely than ever, but at least he knew why now. Without the element of surprise, it was actually rather pleasant.

The plant paused, and one of its heads met his eyeline expectantly, looking for a definitive go-ahead. Sun'li nodded wordlessly. After a too-long pause, wondering why a plant with no eyes wasn’t responding to a solely visual cue, he choked off an embarrassed verbal affirmation. The feelers got to work, sliding his shorts and underwear off his waist in one smooth motion, leaving a trail of the substance coating their ends on his thighs. Sun'li was no longer wondering if it might be sap. He hadn’t realised how tight his shorts had gotten against him until he felt the relief washing over his body to no longer be straining against the fabric.

More vines shot out, slithering their way under Sun'li’s shirt and sleeves to caress his entire body, tracing slick patterns in his skin wherever they went. The plant’s heads continued to sway happily as it explored. To his surprise (and dismay), the vines responsible for disrobing him continued down past his thighs, tracing the contours of his legs until they reached his ankles, whereupon they began to curl around them, forming a tight grip. Another pair traced their way to his wrists, similarly seizing them in a tight coil.

Sun'li’s stomach lurched a little as he felt himself being lifted clean off the ground, effortlessly enough to belie surprising strength on the part of the plant holding him aloft now. He made a conscious effort to slow his breathing in an attempt to keep his cool. It made sense, on further thought: he needed to lay himself out if they really wanted to get anywhere together, and better to do it in midair than on the hard and newly-sodden floor.

He came to a stop four or five fulms in the air, held directly above the plant. The pollen concentration was higher up here, too, and he could feel his skin crying out to be touched. After a few moments of patient waiting for Sun'li to relax and let it support his weight, the plant obliged. He could feel the pointed tip of one of its feelers trace its way directly down his spine, causing him to shiver. It slid down to and past his tailbone, pausing once again with its tip gently teasing him open. It was a little unbearable, made apparent by the whine in his voice as he asked it to proceed. “Please, just… _Please_.”

Two of the plant’s heads waved in affirmation near his head, affectionately nuzzling the sides of his neck. At the same time, he felt a sudden warmth envelop him below the waist. The tendril poised at his entrance was secreting more of its natural lubricant, similar in texture to man-made options he’d used countless times but without their sharp, stinging cold. When it appeared satisfied, the plant plunged its feeler inside of him.

Sun'li cried out, overwhelmed by feeling as the bud entered him up to its widest point and then further, filling him up entirely closer to his entrance and probing further into him with its point. The plant attempted a few experimental thrusts, varying its depth and angle until Sun'li’s gasps and moans reached a fever pitch, and then making its best effort to keep them there.

The pleasure was overwhelming, to the point that the motes of light floating above his face were starting to look distinctly out-of-focus to Sun'li, and the nerve endings firing inside him were sending waves coursing through his body in time with his increasingly desperate gasps. It was not enough and too much all at once; delightful in the sensations it produced and agonising in the lack of relief. He strained a little against the wrist restraints, not trying to pull himself free so much as send a message.

The plant, befitting its expertise with nonverbal communication, got the idea. While the two heads held near his shoulders continued their affectionate headbutting, a third found its way up between Sun'li’s legs, rubbing up against his cock in the first direct contact it had received in this entire affair and prompting a low moan from him in response.

It was nothing, though, in comparison to the sounds that came out of his throat when the plant opened its mouth and lowered itself over him completely before closing it again. He was enveloped in that same feeling of slick warmth he had felt from the smaller vines, accompanied by intense all-over pressure on his shaft. It was enough to make his hips jerk involuntarily, his body bending in half as far as the vines restraining him would allow.

Another feeler stroked his cheek, a signal for Sun'li to try to relax and let the plant do what it did best. It trailed down his collarbones to his chest, prompting another small gasp as it brushed against his nipple. It began to coil around his chest, careful to measure the rise and fall of his breathing to ensure it didn’t cut off any air. Once that was done, it performed a quick test; a single pump with its mouth. Sun'li squirmed and tensed up, but with the vine around his chest to hold him steady he didn’t have the range of motion to jerk around like he did the last time. It was so intense that Sun'li was pretty sure he was starting to see stars, although he may just have been seeing double with all of the pollen in the air.

The plant worked every one of its appendages in perfect harmony, finding individual rhythms for each that elicited the most rewarding verbal and physical responses from Sun'li. Who, for his part, could do little but moan at near the top of his lungs; the only action left available to him as an outlet for the stimulus overpowering his body. He knew he wouldn’t last much longer, whether it be by reaching release or blacking out entirely.

Sure enough, after what felt like twenty minutes but must surely have been closer to a tenth of that, he felt a familiar heat surging through his body, even over the top of the heat suffusing him from inside and out already. The plant seemed aware of this too, speeding up its use of speed and pressure until his pulse and breathing ran ragged and he hit the first wave of climax. It didn’t stop there, though; maintaining the sensory assault until every moment of his orgasm had reached its end.

Gingerly – although nothing could be ginger _enough_ in his current state not to prompt several whimpers from Sun'li – the plant withdrew its vines from him one by one until it was holding him upright, only by the wrists. It stretched its feelers as far as it could to lay him out on a dry patch of ground, where he gratefully collapsed, panting. It was some time before he fully regained his senses, but Sun'li distinctly remembered the hazy sight of a dozen vines waving joyously at him as they retreated inside the flower petals, closing themselves back up.

Once he had regained enough composure in his head and steadiness in his legs, not sooner than half an hour later, Sun'li picked himself up and made his way out. He placed a hand on the plant as he did, murmuring a quiet _thank you_ before bending down to retrieve his clothes. They had fallen straight into the water, and were now dripping wet. Not that his shirt was in a much better state, sodden with sweat as it was. He was doomed to some pronounced discomfort, although the midday sun in the city would ensure that he had dried off before he had to see anyone he knew.

\---

True to his word, Severian returned a week later, with Urianger in tow. They had arranged to meet Sun'li at the Alchemists’ Guild for a status report and the return of the greenhouse key. Severian looked puzzled to see Sun'li sitting in wait when he arrived, until Urianger whispered something in his ear and his face lit up with recollection.

“Ah…” Severian paused in the very first moments of his greeting.

“Sun'li,” he offered, less annoyed by the failure to learn his name now than he had been a week ago. Remarkable what a week of rewarding work, good friends, and daily vigorous sex with a giant flower could do for one’s disposition.

“Sun'li, right! Good to see you! I trust everything went okay?”

“Yes, sir.” Sun'li rose to his feet and rummaged in his pockets for the key, holding it out to Severian, who accepted it absentmindedly. “Did the two of you have a good, er, expedition?”

“Why, yes! I think Urianger would agree that it was a...”

“Most edifying experience,” finished Urianger, in his usual smugly uninflected cadence. Sun'li didn’t care to know more than that.

“You should find everything as you left it,” said Sun'li.

“Yes, yes, the two of us actually stopped by the greenhouse on our way here,” said Severian. “Everything appears to be in order, and I must say, I’ve never seen that big fellow looking so lush and healthy. You _must_ tell me how you accomplished it!”

Sun'li blurted out an excuse about running late for something important so rapidly that the words slurred into something barely coherent as he fled the Guild as though he had a hellshound on his tail.

“I must say, Urianger, I have no idea where you find these people. What an odd one he was!”

“Indeed,” replied Urianger. “’Tis not for you or I to understand such eccentrics as he.”


End file.
